Building a Modest Greenhouse – Materials

This is the material list for my greenhouse. This creates a 22 foot by 16 foot by 12 foot high greenhouse. Total cost of materials comes in at $548.96.

I’m sure there will be tons more things for me to buy, from tweaking my initial design, to adding gadgets and gizmos (oh the ideas for better ventilation, watering, lights… list goes on…), but for now I’m fairly happy with the set up, so thought I’d share the list with everyone. I’ll be posting my thoughts, and insights, as well as the instructions in a bit once I get everything organized.

I took the $500ish price tag and broke it down into 4 sections: Frame, Connectors, Covering, & Simple Doors. The Frame is hardware of the ribs itself. The skeleton of the entire setup. Connectors is all the little odd pieces to put everything together. The Covering is the slip cover protecting, and heating the greenhouse. And last the Simple Doors are just a way to get in and out. Their nothing fancy, and I’m sure I’ll be upgrading this in the future (probably before the winter), but for now they are working just fine.

This is for my design. I actually recommend making it about 2 foot shorter as the longest plastic covering I could find in the store is 20 feet (instead of my 22) This means 1 less rib [which comprises of 3 10′ PVC pieces, 3 PVC crosses, 2 U-bolts, and 3 bungies). That’ll end up saving you about $35. If you wanted you can save yourself $50 extra by making the structure a bit more permanent by cementing the whole thing and skipping the bungies all together. More on that in the post about building this.

On the other side of that “saving money” thing you could also go the other way and make it longer and longer, which would cost about $35 extra dollars too for each additional 2 feet. Only thing to be aware for each foot over the width of the plastic sheet you by you’ll need to use an entire 30 foot length to get that space. So you could go another 30 feet or another 2… the cost is the same for the plastic. The $35 dollars comes from the connectors, PVC, and other things like that.

Already trying to figure out ways to better control the heat… hit 105 inside while I was setting the thing up before I could raise the sides… YIKES! So much to say, but will leave that for a different posts. This is just to get the material list out there.

Have any suggestions, or comments for this new greenhouse owner? Leave a comment below.